Was Man Created?

by Henry A. Mott

Out of the semi-apes developed two classes of genuine apes; but as the narrow-nosed or catarrhini class are the only ones related to man, the others will not be considered. These narrow-nosed apes originated by the transformation of the jaw, and by the claws on the toes changing into nails. The still-living long-tail nose-apes and holy apes (semnopithecus) probably resembled the oldest ancestors of this group.

The tailed apes by the loss of their tail and some of their hair covering, and by the excessive development of that portion of their brain above the facial portion of the skull, developed into the man-like apes (anthropoides)—such as the gorilla and chimpanzee of Africa, and the orang and gibbon of Asia. The human ancestors of this group existed during the miocene period. From the anthropoides developed the ape-like men (pithecanthropi) during the tertiary period. The speechless primæval men (alali), then, is the connecting link between the man-like apes and man. The fore-hand of the anthropoides became the human hand, their hinder-hand a foot for walking. They did not possess the articulate human language of words and the higher developments, as consciousness and the formation of ideas must have been very imperfect.

Out of the pithecanthropi men developed genuine man, by the development of the animal language of sounds into a connected or articulate language of words—the brain also developed higher and higher. This transition took place, probably, at the beginning of the quaternary period, or possibly in the tertiary.

We have now very briefly reviewed the principal outlines of the ancestors of man, showing that man has developed from the little mass of protoplasm, as have all animals and plants. He therefore was not spontaneously created, but was developed. The question is often asked by simple-minded people, with much delight, Why do we not behold the interesting spectacle of the transformation of a chimpanzee into a man, or conversely of a man by retrogression into an orang?—it only shows that they are not acquainted with the first principles of the Doctrine of Descent. "Not one of the apes," says Schmidt, "can revert to the state of his primordial ancestors, except by retrogression—by which a primordial condition is by no means attained—he cannot divest himself of his acquired characters fixed by heredity, nor can he exceed himself and become man; for man does not stand in the direct line of development from the ape. The development of the anthropoid apes has taken a lateral course from the nearest human progenitors, and man can as little be transformed into a gorilla as a squirrel can be changed into a rat."

Fig. I.

Fig. I.—Salamandra Maculata.—Haeckel. The Water Newts and Salamanders were the next higher stage after the Proteus and the Axolotl.